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Wednesday, February 21, 2018

This is why we can’t have nice things: Dumping YouTube

Youtube sent me a nice form email today, essentially accusing me of being a spammer, an impersonator or a re-uploader. They didn’t phrase it exactly that way, but the inference was clearly there, and the result was the same: they are no longer allowing me "access to monetization tools associated with" the Youtube Partner Program

As you probably heard, we recently announced updates to the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). We made these changes to address a spike in abuse on YouTube by bad actors like spammers, impersonators, and re-uploaders. Our goal is to ensure a healthy ecosystem where original creators can grow and thrive.
As of today, your channel, notesonvideo will no longer have access to monetization tools associated with YPP because it doesn’t meet the new threshold of 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers.

Admittedly, I haven’t been uploading videos to YouTube recently, so my traffic is way down, but it seems just a little annoying that they are accusing me of being a spammer or impersonator after I’ve been in this program for several years.

YouTube says “we’re doing this to address spamming” but it’s unclear to me how this limit helps with that; many spammers and impersonators get thousands more hits than I do!

YouTube says that many of the people being dumped were making less than $100 a year, and that’s true too, but hey, that’s a nice lunch! And clearly what this really means is that more of the money will now go to those making money, at the expense of those at the bottom.

But that’s capitalism at work.

Anyway, I’m unpublishing my videos on YouTube, and plan to use some other service (maybe Vimeo) from now on. If I’m not going to get paid even the few dollars they were paying me, there’s no incentive to stick with them; why support the monopolies?